Ruth Bader Ginsburg, failed political pundit | CNN Politics

The only women who have become Supreme Court justices pose in the Justices' Conference Room on October 1, 2010, the day of Justice Elena Kagan's investiture. Standing, from left to right, are retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. These images are part of a collection from the book "My Own Words" by Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams, published by Simon & Schuster.

Courtesy of Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Photograph of Ruth Bader taken when she was 2 years old.

Courtesy of Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Professional bridal photograph of Ruth Bader taken in June 1954.

Courtesy of Justice Ginsburg's Personal Collection

Columbia Law Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, photographed in the spring of 1980 shortly after President Jimmy Carter nominated her for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Courtesy of Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her husband, Martin Ginsburg, and their children, James and Jane, off the shore of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in December 1979.

Courtesy of Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Marty Ginsburg travel by bus from Charles de Gaulle Airport to downtown Paris, circa 1988.

Courtesy of Justice Ginsburg's Personal Collection

Justice Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pose on an elephant in Rajistan during their tour of India in 1994.

Courtesy of Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg held basketballs that they received as gifts from the United States women's Olympic basketball team during the team's visit to the court on December 6, 1995.

Courtesy of Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg works out on an elliptical during a training session at the Supreme Court, sporting her "Super Diva" sweatshirt on August 30, 2007.

Courtesy of Wendy Williams

Ruth Bader Ginsburg through the years

Story highlights

Ginsburg, 83, faces the prospect of leaving the court with President Donald Trump able to nominate a successor

She criticized Trump during the campaign as a 'faker'

CNN —

Like many others, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might have miscalculated about the election.

Back in 2013, Ginsburg revealed that she did not feel pressure to retire.

“I think it’s going to be another Democratic president,” after Obama, she told The Washington Post. “The Democrats do fine in presidential elections; their problem is they can’t get out the vote in the midterm elections.”

The diminutive justice, a trailblazer in gender discrimination law who enjoys near rockstar status among young fans – has been repeatedly asked over the years about retirement. It’s not that she shows any signs of slowing down – indeed she is as incisive as ever from the bench and boasts about her workout routine. But she is, after all, 83 years old and has survived two bouts of cancer. In recent years she’s hinted that part of her retirement calculation depended upon the fact that a Democrat would succeed President Barack Obama.

Elle Magazine asked in 2014 her whether she would resign while Obama is in office.

Ginsburg noted the Senate would be an issue for the President with a GOP filibuster.

“Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have? If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court,” she said. “[Senate Democrats] took off the filibuster for lower federal court appointments, but it remains for this court. So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided.”

And then last summer she went on a tirade against Donald Trump. She called him a “faker” to CNN’s legal analyst Joan Biskupic. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment.”

And to The New York Times’ Adam Liptak she had this to say: “I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president.

She added: “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be – I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

She told Liptak that it reminded her of something her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, a prominent tax lawyer who died in 2010, would have said: “‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.’”